SOCIALIST APPEAL NOVEMBER 23, 1940 SOCIALIST APPE AL Roosevelt and Wall St. Go Forward VOL. IV No. 47 Saturday, November, 23 1940 PuHamed Wohly by the SOCIALIST APPEAL PUBLISHING ASSN.
at 116 University Place, New York, Telephone: Algonquin 1547 and mixing the ingredients of these explosives when sabotage is eliminated is as safe as sweeping the floor.
If any Congressman objects to such a demonstration on the ground of its danger, then let him repudiate Dies in public press and launch an investigation where it is really needed the manufacturing processes of the greedy munitions profiteers and their connections with men in public of fice like Dies who cover them up.
FDR Plans Same 50 50 Break for Labor in Coming War As Workers Received in the Last Imperialist Confilt Editorial Board: FELIX MORROW ALBERT GOLDMAN General Manager: RUTH JEFFREY Wall Street Stooge cracks down on the auto workers You Can Strike, By ART PREIS Motors Corp.
III.
During World War No. 1, 21, 000 with a thousand provocations, new American millionaires were speed up. Wage euts, firing of job created. Every slaughtered Amerstewards, strike threat in Flint ican soldier was worth 500, 000 is countered by a lock out, and net profit to Wall Street.
the cry. Fifth Columnists! Big As for labor, it received an av.
Business drapes itself in an Amererage 30 percent monetary wage ican flag, and hopes to crush laincrease. This was more than bor with impunity.
siped out by an average price increase of 100 percent. The fiction CIVIL LIBERTIES that all the American workers THREATENED wore silk shirts during the war, gigantic program for handis refuted by the fact that total cuffing labor is underway. The wverage real scages declined as American Civil Liberties Union, much as 30 percent.
in its recent annual report, stated: LABOR REGIMENTED At no period in the twenty In addition, the entire labor years of its existence have the movement was regimented Civil Liberties Union and other Strikes were met by ruthless supagencies engaged with protectpression; strikers were court mar ing civil rights been confronted tialed and given long prison terms.
with such an array of threatenIn some instances Army troops ed measures of repression.
marched into struck industries These are tokens of the fifty.
and operated them at Army pay, fifty break labor will get from 21 a month. When the war was the third term. And there are over, the defenders of democracy other straws in the wind. From came back to unemployment and August 1939 to November 13, 1940, ccumulated debt. By 1921, there according to official government were over million without jobs.
figures, average wholesale comThe national debt, which was modity prices advanced 17. per 88 per person in 1914, was 228 cent. All labor has taken a huge per person at the end of the war.
wage cut the easy way.
Despite terrorization, patriotic pressure and the complete capitu brought charges against 156 Min WORKERS TAXED lation of their own leaders, the neapolis strikers. 32 received priAn income tax on incomes as workers were compelled to fight son sentences. Roosevelt ignored low as 800 a year, 15 a week, back against unendurable condi. the plea of the entire labor move was slipped over last July. New tions. Starting with 1916, a trement to pardon the convicted men. defense taxes on movies, tomendous strike wave swept the The principle layed down by baceo, gasoline have been slapped country. In 1917, there were 4, 450 Roosevelt in July 1989 is now in on the workers. hint is given strikes, more than in any year effect in private industry. During of the tax burdens yet to come except 1937.
the past year, the government has by the announcement of Treasury moved VIVID MEMORY into every important officials that they are going to prostrike to break it with the dicpose new taxes on soft drinks, etc.
The memory of this tremendous cum, You can strike against the Labor is playing checkers with struggle is vivid in the mind of government. Every industry be the Roosevelt administration. The the ruling class. Through its comes part of national defense; jumps permitted labor by the agents, like Roosevelt, it now every strike is against the gov. New Deal have been give aways, seeks to re assure labor in preparernment. to maneuver labor into position ation for the coming war. This where all its pieces can be swept time, say the pay. triots, laboris WAR ORDERS off the board.
in for a fty fifty break. TO OPEN SHOPS Behind Roosevelt chair Wall The initiation of this break While Rethletiem Stool received Street stands grinning, holding started in July 1939. During over a billion dollars in war or the bets. Behind labor stand mounting unemployment, WPA apders, despite a federal court rul Hillman, Green and the rest of the propriations were suddenly sliced ing that the company is in viola labor kibitzers nudging labor in hall. But more significant, tion of the federal labor laws, shoulder, urging it to the fatal the Roosevelt administration aban. the government ruthlessly curbed moves toward boss war. That doned the principle of the prea threatened strike of Bethlehem your play! What are you waiting vailing wages. This was a cal workers.
culated provocation of union la. At the same time, it struck a bor.
deadly blow at all New Deal labor studies the board. It senses some Labor scratches its head and STRIKERS THROWN IN JAIL legislation by openly declaring a thing tricky in the set up.
When the WPA workers struck, policy of granting war orders to Roosevelt declared, You cannot the vilest open shoppers, Du Pont, watch out for traps!
Yes, your move, labor! And strike against the government. Ford Motors, Bethlehem Steel, Federal agents, acting as spies, etc.
End Those who are so eager to send American boys Subscriptions: 00 per year: 00 for six months.
to die for democracy against totalitarianism Foreign: 00 per year, 50 for alx months. Bundle orders: cents per copy in storie coples: centa a the United States: cents might find plenty of fighting to do right here at per copy in all foreign home.
First Roosevelt tells the WPA workers that Reentered as second classmatter December 4, You can strike against the government. The 1989, at the post office at New York, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
National Defense Commission and the bosses are telling the workers that you can strike against the government in private industries with govFIGHT WITH THE ernment orders. Every piddling local government SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY agency is pulling the same kind of talk.
La Guardia now tells the New York transport ON THE WAR FRONT: workers that they can strike against violations by the local Board of Transportation of the union For: contract, because they are civil service employees. Military training of workers, financed What a commentary it is on the hypocricy of by the government, under control of these democratic gentlemen who have yelped the trade unions.
loudest over the fact that in Germany the workers The establishment of special officers cannot strike against the government. Totalitarianism, you see, only applies to the enemy.
training camps, financed by the gov.
unions, to train workers to become Unknown Nationality officers. Confiscation of all war profits all It is only two weeks since the re election of Roosevelt for a third term, yet the steps leading company books to be open for trade the United States to military participation in union inspection World War No. have visibly quickened. Expropriation of all war industries Four German freighters after fourteen months and their operation under workers in Tampico put out to sea. Not more than ten control.
miles from port they were met, according to the press by warships of unknown nationality. One Trade union wages for all workers of the freighters was scuttled by its crew, the drafted into the army.
others hastily returned. Full equality for Negroes in the armed This happened not in the North Atlantic, but forces Down with Jim Crowism.
in the Gulf of Mexico, not far from New Orleans, Houston, Galveston. An end to secret diplomacy.
The press immediately dropped further men8. people referendum on any and tion of the warships of unknown nationality. If all wars.
they were British warships, they were within the 300 mile neutrality zone established by Roosevelt, AT HOME: in clear violation of Roosevelt neutrality laws.
For: But a darker suspicion seems more probable. job and decent living for every The British fleet is busy around England, the Mediterranean, the Far East. Were these warrker ships of unknown nationality American war2. Thirty thirty 30 weekly minimum ships? If that is true, then the American battle wage 30 hour weekly maximum for fleet has carried out the first act of military parfor all workers on all jobs.
ticipation in the present imperialist conflict. 30 weekly old age and disability pension. Full social, political and economic By Inches Alfred Sloan, Jr. chairman of the General equality for the Negro people.
Motors Corporation, and side kick of William Workers Defense Guards against vigi. Knudsen, GM executive and head of the National lante and fascist attacks.
Defense Commission, last week fired the starting twenty billion dollar Federal public gun in the race of Big Business to remove all works and housing program to provide limitations on the work week, and to eliminate jobs for the unemployed.
overtime pay and the other conditions won by years of organized labor struggle. All in the in7. Expropriate the Sixty Families. terest of national defense. An Independent Labor Party based on Speaking before a dinner of the Academy of the Trade Unions.
Political Science attended by leading Wall Street Worker and Farmer Governbig wigs and government representatives, Sloan ment.
drew rounds of applause when he advocated that the six day week be substituted for the five day week in all industries.
The New York Times of Nov. 14 reported. In his prepared manuscript, Mr. Sloan urged that the penalty for overtime should be cancelled during the emergency to encourage a longer work During the past weeks a number of explosions week, but he omitted this from his speech as delivered.
in chemical plants have taken the lives of a score or more workers. All the evidence gathered by exAt the last moment Sloan decided a knife by inches is better than a guillotine.
plosive experts, by company superintendents and representatives of the press shows conclusively that occasioned industry. Not even the FBI, which will remain as The death of Neville Chamberlain writes an long as a year on the study of an overturned truck ironic footnote to the history of the second world in orcier to attempt to pin an alleged crime on a war. The old buzzard of Birmingham has had the union, has been able to gainsay this evidence. last of his roses and the last of his brickbats.
Nevertheless, members of the Dies Committee The events of the last year and a half have rushed into headlines throughout the nation with shown, however, that the policy of appeasement cries of sabotage and hints of a nation wide pursued by Chamberlain and Daladier had a very plot to disrupt the munitions industry.
sober basis in their appreciation of the real reNeither Roosevelt nor any other of the tools lationship of forces in Europe. This was certainly of Wall Street resident in Washington have lifted true in Daladier case, as the quick collapse of a finger to dispel the sinister impression Mr. Dies France proved.
and his committee are deliberately creating, The appeasers were not simply naive dumbIt is clear that the labor movement is facing bells. They were men who understood that their a cold blooded attempt on the part of the bosses own regimes were too rotten to risk in a war, that to fan a spy hysteria. This hysteria on the one Hitler was militarily stronger, and that a conflict hand covers up the fact that the workers blown might prove fatal. But the war had to come neverto bits in the explosions were the victims of the theless. The fatal outcome had to be risked. The greed of employers, who in their eagerness to fill appeasers won only a short year respite for lasttheir pockets in the golden flow of war orders, are minute preparations. For France it was not enough.
quite willing to sacrifice the lives of employees For Britain, thanks to its insular position, the exthrough hazardous short cuts in the manufacturing tra time was worth a little more.
process of explosives or through inadequate pre It is in this sense that the role of Chamberlain cautions.
has to be assessed. He was not the poor, deluded On the other hand, this hysteria permits the sap over whose corpse editorial writers wagged employers to direct blows against organized labor solemn heads. He was both a symbol and a repby calling protests, demands for improved work resentative of the British bourgeoisie slipping from ing conditions ikes sabotage.
of eminc omination in world If sabotage is at the bottom of these explosions affairs. It is doubtful whether he really thought it as Mr. Dies alleges, we suggest that he make was peace in our time when he came back from practical proof. Let him bring on to the floor of Munich in September, 1938. But the people of EngCongress a few hundred tons of dynamite just be land thought it was. They were miserably disilfore it goes through one of the delicate and dangerlusioned.
ous processes in which the workers were killed. The fight for peace in our time has still a Let him and his committee members carry through long course to run and to be won, it will have to this process step by step before the eyes of Con advance beyond the Churchills and the Hitlers.
gress in order to demonstrate that compounding The people won be fooled all of the time.
Eight Professional Pacifists Seek Jail Term By JOSEPH HANSEN Eight students of the Union Theological Seminary have been sentenced by the federal court in New York to serve a year and a day in prison for refusing to register under the draft. All of them as members of an organization opposing conscription and war on the ground of religious scrules would have come under the classification of conscientious objectors; hence, under present interpretation of the draft laws, not subject to active participation in the future armed conflicts in which the United States will engage.
Their acceptance even seeking of a prison sentence was thus a planned effort of professional pacifists to make a dramatic political demonstration of their views. They oppose war in general because of their scruples over the shedding of blood in general. They are principled vegetarians in the field of politics.
By their example, they hope to influence prospective soldiers into seeking jail terms rather than military education. Their answer to imperialist war is, jails not battleships!
IN KEEPING WITH THEIR POSITION The refusal of these eight to register and their seeking prison sentence to underline this refusal flows with iron logic from their political position. If they oppose military training, then they cannot even carry a registration card. Anything else is cowardice, inconsistency, a fatal concession to the spirit of militarism. Like the fabled virgin they pray God to save them from becoming even a little bit pregnant!
Other pacifist groups who oppose military train ing in general and who yet make no demonstrations such as this one of the Bible students will have difficulty in demonstrating that they take their pacifist views either logically or seriously. These bible students are obviously honest and courageous. But they contribute nothing to the real struggle against war.
Their pacifism is not the pacifism of the oppressed pacifism such as that mistakenly expressed by the Negro sailors who protested the Jim Crow conditions prevailing in the Navy. Their pacifism the professional pacifism of such treacherous petty bourstois politicians as Norman Thomas. Their pacifism is a perfidious snare designed to deliver the working class throttled and limp to the war mongers.
In times of peace these pacifists accept all the class injustices, all the lies, the frame ups, the per versions and distortions of truth imposed by the rule ing class. But when the ruling class projects these injustices, lies, frame ups, perversions, onto the field of battle, these pacifists make a demonstration: No.
We will have nothing to do with military training: It leads to bloodshed! We choose jail. FORCE AND FORCE ALONE These pacifists who oppose military training must be rejected with the utmost contempt by the class.
conscious worker, just as he would reject with scorn and have a seab who said, Unions? No will have nothing to do with them. They lead to tear gas!
choose independence!
The working class cannot exchange a year milltary training for a prison cell as have these professional pacifists. Even if the millions in the working class could make a trade like this, that would not convince Wall Street that wars from now on should be conducted without tears, dirt, and bloolshed. Nor would it put an end to war in general.
The cold reality is that the working class will inevitably find itself up to the neck in the reek and bloody slush of the battlefields of World War No. and no bomb shelters such as prison cells provide!
The task is to smash the capitalist system which the pacifists endure and support. War is nothing but the extension of peace time capitalist institutions in a more violent and horrible form. The bloody institution of war against which the pacifists offer up weak protests can be ended only by ending the system as a whole.
The working class alone can lead the masses in carrying out this task but to do so it must be trained in the military arts. That is one of the requisites As Krank Knox, Secretary of the Navy, declared with truth before a group of business men in Boston on November 14, In a world like this. force and force alone determines the fate of nations.
THE REAL OPPOSITION TO WAR The revolutionary socialist in contrast to the pacifist is a real opponent of capitalist war.
He starts not with some abstraction about the desirability of peace and non violence in general, a proposition with which anyone will agree. He starts from the real world of the class struggle and he takes his stand at the vanguard of the working class where the blows fall thickest.
Whether the pacifists think it objectionable or not, military training of the masses is on the order the day. The question is, shall it be organized like an open shop with the bosses in strict control, through their officers or shall it be organized in connection with the trade unions with the workers in control?
Other political representatives of the petty.
bourgeoisie, such as the so called Workers Party, do clare that trade union control of military training is bad and to be rejected because the present heads of the trade unions are treacherous fakers! This answer is as pious as the sentiments of the pacifists who went to jail, but not quite as honest. The basic question is, which class organizations shall control military training, those of the bourgeoisie or those of the workers?
Only the petty bourgeois pacifists, who reject the class struggle altogether, or those who like Westbrook Pegler offer conditional support to the trade unions providing they cleanse themselves of racket.
cering elements can refuse an answer to this question.
The real opponents of capitalist war draw a sharp line of demarcation between the interests of the bourgeoisie, its agents, both labor fakers and professional pacifists, on the one hand; and the interests of labor on the other.
For the present period, this line is formulated in the slogan Military Training Under Control of the Trade Unions.
First Results of Our Military Policy Mr. Dies and Sabotage by the unparalleled expansion of the orchions Birmingham Buzzard (Continued from Page 1) a transitional program in general. tion on this score? How did it crites who have attacked our reso. That is why in the present world happen that Shachtman mentor lution in their official paper conditions it needs a military and friend and colleague, with These people are in favor of the transition program in particular. whom he fought shoulder to proletarian revolution but they FIRST CLASS SUBSTITUTE Trotskyists, suddenly only two shoulder against Trotsky and the are really incapable of under The Lovestoneltes have not yet months later! openly repudiated standing transitional measures and demands which can take the commented on our military resolu socialism and passed over into the workers as they are not yet re tion, as far as know. But it camp of the class enemy? An exvolutionary, and advance them to oft from their frenzied defense of what you might have expected they find it possible to take time planation of this circumstance is ward the revolutionary goal; a Great Britain, they will surely at from Shachtman if you don program which can form a bridge tack our resolution from the know Shachtman. But his sharp.
of the workers and the ultimate left. as they attacked the generally polemical article, full of logic of their struggle; in other Fourth International last year. Burnham; it is intended to drown transitional program of the sound and fury, is not directed at words, a transitional program, That is why they cannot under We shall wait and see. Meantime out the question of Burnham by we have a first class substitute shouting loud and long against stand or agree with us today any inore than they could understand for a Herbergian outburst of others. It is not directed at the or agree with the general transl. Marxism, embellished with treat those who in their stupid, ign phoney radicalism and pseudo man who deserted socialism but ternational adopted at its World levant historical references and orant way still remain aithin Congress. It is this sectarian misapplied quotations, in a recent to it.
mentality in general that dooms cial organ of the Workers Party. DENOUNCED TROTSKY them to complete isolation from. This is the political group which only a few months ago Burn: the current struggle of the work the well known Professor Burnham, with Shachtman at his heels, ers and condemns them to utter then, with callous disregard of denounced Trotsky and the Trotfutility despite all their intentions. then, with callous dirogard of skyites as capitulators to Stalin SECTARIAN VIEW his parental obligations, abandon and as the left cover for Hitler.
ed, with the cruel remark that it so spoke Burnham, the spokesman The will surely reject begins with foundations none top of the minority, at our party con our military program if they have firm and the parting salute: vention a few months ago. Now, not already done so. God forgive cannot wish success to the Work without so much as an explaname. don read the Weekly People ers Party. The author of this tion of our transformation, ar attentively as should and burlesque is Max Shachtman. And Shachtman describes us as capitu don know whether they have yet it marks his first utterance on tators to American imperialism, expressed themselves. The controversial questions for a long as almost if not quite social patwill have nothing less than the time. After the double disaster of riots, as class collaborationists, as unconditional surrender of the his polemic with Trotsky and the falsiflers of the views and tradicapitalist class. No immediate desertion of Burnham, Shachtman tions of the Bolsheviks in the last demand, no transitional program. retired into silence and contem. war which he, of course, defends.
But since the capitalist class, up plation for many months. And An unsuspecting casual reader to the present at any rate, has that was the best thing for him might easily imagine that the man shown no disposition to surrender, to do. Total abstinence is the is on a revolutionary rampage.
the remains aloof, unterri best prescription for a man sick But in reality he is only kibitzfied and uncontaminated and, con from talking too much. But that ing. His entire article from besequently, without the slighest in couldn forever. Now he is ginning to end is a mixture of lluence on the course of develop at it again and, of course, as he confusion and bad faithment in the labor movement. Ab himself says, his remarks are Shachtman polemic. Not a sin stract propaganda for socialism Sharply polemical.
gle one of his points can stand is good and necessary. But such inspection. In my next article propaganda alone can never pro WHAT ABOUT BURNHAM? shall undertake to prove this duce a revolutionary victory of When the announcement was point by point. In doing so, the workers. It is necessary to monde, with much fanfare, that hope, as said in the beginning.
supplement it by a practical pro Shachtman was returning to the to contribute something to the gram of agitation adapted to the political wars one might have clarification of the many and se needs of the day and the present thought that conscience and com rious questions concerning our stage of working class developmon sense would require him, policy raised by workers in disment, in order to lift the move first of ally to deal with the ques. cussions with our comrades in ment higher and turn it in a tion of Burnham. Doesn he the field. If succeed in this revolutionary direction. That is owe his anxiously waiting public the time spent on an otherwise why the revolutionary party needs at least a few words of explana distasteful task will not be wasted.